26-117: Fire Weather Testbed Cloud Developer

Colorado State University•Boulder, CO

7d•$110,000 - $120,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University (CSU) seeks to fill a full-time Cloud Developer position designed to conduct collaborative research with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) located at the Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) in Boulder, CO. The individual in this position will work in the NOAA/OAR/GSL Weather Informatics and Decision Support (WIDS) Division’s Fire Weather Testbed (FWT). This position will be responsible for setting up and maintaining cloud applications and solutions to support FWT experiments, including installing experimental software packages and data sources. The Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University (CSU) is a multi-million-dollar research organization located on CSU's Foothills Campus in Fort Collins, Colorado. CIRA is a cooperative institute (CI) that is also a research department within CSU's College of Engineering, in partnership with the Department of Atmospheric Science. Its vision is to conduct interdisciplinary research in the atmospheric sciences by entraining skills beyond the meteorological disciplines, exploiting advances in engineering and computer science, facilitating transitional activity between pure and applied research, leveraging both national and international resources and partnerships, and assisting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), CSU, the State of Colorado, and the Nation through the application of our research to areas of societal benefit. NOAA's Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) is a federal science and research laboratory under NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. GSL provides the National Weather Service (NWS) and the nation with environmental observation, prediction, computer, visualization, and information systems. These systems deliver data, forecasts, and predictions of weather, including severe weather events, within the next few minutes to weeks away. GSL is a leader in the applied research, directed development, and technology transfer of environmental data, models, products, and services that enhance environmental understanding with the outcome of supporting commerce, protecting life and property, and promoting a scientifically literate public. Housed at GSL, the FWT is a NOAA testbed dedicated to serving the wildfire communities through pursuing improvements to fire weather forecasting and decision support services. These improvements will be achieved by connecting stakeholders and their information needs to the scientific research and development communities. The FWT is a physical and virtual environment designed to bring the wildfire community together, with an end goal of a safer society and healthier environment achieved through scientific and technological advances. Numerous experiments will be conducted in the FWT and will include a broad spectrum of science fields including atmospheric, geophysical, hydrologic, and environmental sciences as well as social and behavioral sciences. This is a full time position, funded for two years, and an option to renew contingent upon satisfactory performance and available funding . The individual in this position will help design, develop, test, and refine applications in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud architecture for the FWT. The FWT is a team that conducts experiments testing the readiness of prototype fire weather tools and software for operational implementation. In addition to setting up and maintaining the cloud environments, this individual will work with outside organizations to install their tools and software for testing and, where necessary, assist in implementing and developing the FWT cloud platform. This includes working with various operating systems, meteorological and environmental data sources, and third-party software packages. The individual in this position will ensure the availability of installed software during FWT experiments. This position reports to the Sr Software Engineer.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field PLUS 5 or more years of relevant work experience; OR Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field PLUS 2 or more years of relevant experience; OR Ph.D. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.
Demonstrated experience developing and managing applications in cloud-based environments. Experience with AWS services including SQS, EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS, and boto3/Java AWS SDK.
Proven experience with backend programming, specifically Python, to retrieve, process, and serve data.
Proficiency in frontend technologies, specifically JavaScript and React, to build modern web applications.
Experience with issue tracking software and distributed version control systems (e.g., Git).
Must be a citizen of the United States or Lawful Permanent Resident with a physical USCIS “Green Card.”
Ability to pass a National Agency Check with Inquiries (NACI) federal background check and receive a NOAA Common Access Card (CAC) ID badge.

Nice To Haves

Experience configuring Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines and utilizing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or AWS CloudFormation.
Experience with containerized systems (Docker) and orchestration platforms like Kubernetes or Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).
Experience retrieving, parsing, and working with specialized meteorological and geospatial datasets and formats (including GRIB2, NetCDF, JSON, GeoTIFF, and Zarr).
Experience using ArcGIS for spatial analysis and/or web integrations.
Familiarity with National Weather Service forecasting platforms, data structures, systems architecture, and collaborative IT frameworks (e.g., AWIPS-II, VLab, EDEX, LDM).

Responsibilities

Develop, implement, and maintain the FWT’s cloud architecture.
Take the lead on software requests from the FWT team, suggesting architectural design changes to improve cloud implementations.
Build full-stack mechanisms to retrieve, parse, and seamlessly integrate meteorological and environmental datasets into intuitive UI/UX platforms for scientific research and model verification.
Collaborate with systems engineers, cloud specialists, and security experts across OAR and GSL to deploy scalable solutions that strictly meet NOAA security boundary requirements.
Install, configure, and adapt third-party software applications to be cloud-native or run efficiently in a cloud environment, managing associated data feeds and access controls.
Work closely with research scientists and external developers to develop technical requirements for deployments, translating scientific needs into functional web interfaces and R&D tools.
Provide knowledge, guidance, and training to the team on AWS Cloud Services.
Assist with the management of FWT cloud systems and complete annual reports documenting project status and milestones.